When baseball unleashes your inner nerd

By Lara Weber

Oct 28, 2015 | 4:42 PM

In Kansas City, there are two kinds of Royals fans: The moose-callers and the librarians.

The moose people look like they're having a ton of fun, but they're sort of what you'd expect from a sports fan. Royals fans love third-baseman Mike Moustakas so they erupt in loud "Mooooooose!" calls whenever he does something they like. Kansas City Star reporter Pete Grathoff asked a bunch of them to do it on camera, which of course they did.

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After watching Game 1 of the World Series against the New York Mets go into 14 innings Tuesday night before the Royals finally claimed the 5-4 win, even I was ready to bellow. But the librarians are my kind of fan. Just as devoted to the Royals as the moose people appear to be, the staff of the Kansas City (Mo.) Public Library has been waging the nerdiest of all nerd sports challenges and it's irresistible.

It began during the Kansas City Royals' playoff series against the Toronto Blue Jays. The social media manager of the Kansas City Public Library (@KCLibrary), Liesl Christman, started tweeting #bookspinepoetry posts ­— photos of small stacks of books with titles that, when read together, created the library's version of trash talk.

In that first volley, most of the photos included travel guides to Canada or Richard Ford's recent novel, "Canada," and read like little bits of verse. "Canada / Sorry You Lost / What Bluebirds Do."

The Toronto Public Library (@torontolibrary) lobbed back with "Warning / Kansas City / It Ain't Over Till It's Over" and it was game-on.

Sports blog SB Nation (and others) wrote about it and suddenly every non-sports fan (like me) who still loves a good rivalry, especially one with clever word play, was on the baseball bandwagon.

Now, it's Kansas City vs. New York in the World Series, and the New York Public Library (@nypl) and the Queens Public Library (@QueensLibrary) are double-teaming for the Mets, though the Kansas City (Kansas) Public Library (@KCKPL) has also hopped on the Royals bandwagon.

After that marathon of Game 1, @nypl posted a book stack that reads "The Long Night / Nice Try / Fast Forward / As Night Falls / Payback." An hour later, @KCLibrary smacked back with an edited version of the same stack, but with "Nice Win" in the middle. The game continues…

Other arts groups are getting in on the action too. Upping the stakes on the Royals side is the Kansas City Symphony, which posted a YouTube video on Tuesday challenging the New York Philharmonic to a World Series bet that would have the conductor of the losing orchestra donning the opposing team's jersey and partaking in all sorts of other musical mischief.

If Game 2 heads into extra innings, I'm sure I could spendv5y3 time learning who all the players are, brushing up on the rules of baseball and memorizing key stats. Instead, I'll probably have the TV on in the background while I obsess over which titles from my own bookshelf could stack up for just the right commentary. "On the Road," "Things Fall Apart," "Moose on the Loose" …